


Sign of the Times

by Toft



Category: BBC Historical Farm TV RPF
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, Historical Roleplay, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 22:34:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2790149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/pseuds/Toft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just the situation, or the time, or something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sign of the Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liviapenn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liviapenn/gifts).



“You’re amazing, you are,” Peter says, coming up behind Ruth as she pours the last bit of steaming jam into a jar. The kitchen is full of warm, moist smells of hot fruit and spices, and the walls are damp with condensation. 

“Flattery’ll get you anywhere. Oy, no fingers in the jam, you,” Ruth says, and produces a spoon with a perfect mound of glistening, dark jelly on it, all for him. It’s like magic. Her hair is tied back in one of her tight plaits, with a scarf over it too, but little wisps are still escaping and are stuck to her forehead. There’s flour on her cheek.

“My hands are filthy,” Peter apologizes, and Ruth snorts.

“Open wide, then.” 

Peter opens his mouth and shuts his eyes, and the sour-sweet taste of blackcurrant explodes into his mouth.

“Mmm. Fantastic.”

Ruth beams at him. 

“You’ve got,” Peter says, without meaning to, and he reaches out and dabs at her floury cheek with his (fairly) clean sleeve cuff, careful not to get mud on her face. A little crease appears in Ruth’s forehead, and she ducks away. She’s a little flushed, but it’s hot in the kitchen.

“Soft lad,” she mutters, then Alex bounds into the kitchen, leaving something clattering behind him in the yard. Ruth rolls her eyes and produces another spoon for him.

“Ta, mother,” he says, grinning, and Ruth swats at him. Peter’s grandfather used to call his grandmother that, used to say exactly that when she brought him a cup of tea in the afternoons. It makes Peter smile. They feel like a family, this bunch of nutters he works with, and he likes the idea of them living like his grandparents or great-grandparents, doing the things they did, feeling the same way about each other, using the same words to describe it.

*

He didn’t mean to have a thing for Ruth. He doesn’t, really. Most of the time he doesn’t even think about it, except when he sees her frowning and coiling her impossibly long hair up behind her in the mornings, and he wants to touch the white nape of her neck, just to see how soft it is. He loves her, of course, loves them both, now - how could he not, after everything they’ve done together? - but sometimes he catches himself feeling something else about Ruth, a sort of gormless, foot-shuffling adoration, like his first crush on his Geography teacher. Her little rough hands, her bright eyes, her sudden, flashing grin. Her little birdlike self, bustling around the farm at the speed of light, doing fifty things at once, terrifying any mess into submission. It’s ridiculous to think of Ruth as delicate, really, when he’s seen her up at five in the bloody morning scrubbing the cobblestones on her knees and swearing. She’s a tiny woman, but she’s like the Tardis - impossibly huge inside. 

“Peter,” she calls across the farmyard. “Could you give us a hand?”

He comes out of the barn to find Ruth bent over, nursing her shin.

“You all right?”

“Grumpy Nell kicked me,” she says, through gritted teeth. She reaches up an arm, and he bends low to give her his shoulder. There’s a spreading red stain on her sock. He whistles.

“Bloody hell, that looks nasty.”

“It’s just a bruise and a cut, I reckon. Nothing broken,” Ruth says. She straightens up, supporting herself on his shoulder, and takes a hop toward the kitchen, then stops and hisses through her teeth. The position is awkward and Peter’s neck is starting to hurt from bending over.

“I can carry you,” he offers.

She looks him over critically, and he feels his face warming under her scrutiny. He spares a moment to be thankful that the cameras aren’t in today. “I reckon you could, as well, all that ploughing you’ve been doing. All right, give it a go.”

His heart’s beating a mile a minute, and he feels ridiculous, but he can’t help feeling several inches taller when he scoops her up without any trouble and her arms wind around his neck. “Bloody hell, Peter,” she says, breathless and laughing against his chest. “Look at you, you big tough man.”

“Mostly clothes, you are,” Peter says, trying to suppress his own giggles. He carries her over the threshold, careful not to knock her leg on the doorjamb.

“Where to, milady?”

“Set me down on the sofa, Ginn,” she says imperiously, in her best aristocratic voice. “And don’t go getting any ideas above your station.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, milady,” he says. He can feel himself blushing to the roots of his hair. She swears softly as he sets her down on the sofa.

“Sorry. You all right?”

“Just fill that bowl with warm water for me, and grab a clean cloth from under the sink. The first aid kit’s in the bathroom.”

She wets the woollen sock where it’s obviously started sticking to the cut, then hikes up her skirt. In the mirror by the door he catches a flash of her thigh, the soft, ginger-coloured hairs on her leg, the purpling bruise against her white skin. He turns away quickly.

“Could you grab the book on my bedside table?” she calls up after him. He’s taken the steps two at a time and is already rummaging for the first aid kit, the white plastic a jarring sight in the old bathroom. They have to have a modern first aid kit, for the insurance. “I’ll try that seventeenth century recipe for bruise balm this afternoon,” she yells from the kitchen. He smiles to himself.

By dinner, she’s limping around, the only sign of the injury a lump under her clean tights where there’s a bandage wrapped around her shin, and the kitchen smells of elderberries and lard.

“How’s the bruise balm?” asks Alex. He fusses over her like a mother hen in a way Peter wouldn’t dare, and Ruth grumbles, but she lets him put a cushion on a chair for her to rest her leg on, and lets him lay the table and serve up the stew she’s had on for hours. Peter suddenly feels her weight in his arms again, and he feels a bit giddy and flushed just thinking about it. He ducks down and eats his stew.

“A bit greasy,” she says. “And elder’s better as an insect repellant or cold medicine, really. Never seen it used as an anti-inflammatory before. Still, we’ll see, won’t we! Shame they weren’t filming today, we won’t be able to track the bruise as well.”

“Maybe centuries of medical science have underestimated the power of the elderberry,” Alex says, grinning. 

“They might,” Ruth says seriously. “Anyway, I’ll make some cordial out of the rest of it, and maybe some syrup. You didn’t need to bring the whole tree, you daft sod.”

Peter shrugs, mouth full of stew. “It was a big bruise.”

“He’s a provider, Ruth,” Alex says, slapping Peter on the shoulder. “You can’t stop him doing what’s in his nature.”

“Carried me over the threshold this morning, he did,” says Ruth. 

“No!” Alex squawks, then roars with laughter. “Emily’ll be furious they weren’t here for that.” Ruth hops down off her chair, and he starts from his seat. “Oh Ruth, don’t get up, I’ll get it. Sit down, you’re impossible.”

“He’s a good boy,” Ruth says, and ruffles Peter’s hair as she limps past him to fetch the salt.

“Look at him, he’s glowing,” Alex giggles.

“I am not,” mutters Peter. 

“Hush, the two of you,” says Ruth, and she ruffles his hair again on the way back. Peter doesn’t quite lean into her touch, but happiness shivers down his back.

*

They’ve been putting up streamers and repairing the cart for the harvest festival and village dance that will be the last episode of the series; there’s still a lot of work left on the farm, but this’ll mark the end of their full-time residence for this year. Ruth is going up to her mum’s for a week, and Alex has been sneaking off to the village to use his laptop in the internet café, looking at flights to New Zealand. Peter feels the way he always does, a sweet ache in his stomach at the thought of leaving all this, leaving them. His hands are chapped and he’s looking forward to seeing his sister’s kids and playing on his x-box, but it’s when he’s about to leave that he feels the most intense, bone-deep love for this part of the country. He feels more alive and alert than he ever has, trying to soak in as much as he can before he has to leave. He spends longer on milking the cows, resting his cheek against their warm sides as they rise and fall with their calm breaths that steam in the air, and stops to listen to the crows that yell at him and each other. He knows it’s bollocks to think that life was simpler back then, or that people’s lives weren’t complicated; it’s the nostalgia that makes it like this, the threat of re-entering modern life, but all the same, there’s a peace inside him now that he knows he’ll lose somewhere on the drive up to London.

Ruth catches him looking out of the window at the gathering dusk, later, when the cameras are mostly off and the village dance has descended into an actual party, crew in jeans and jumpers mixing with locals in period dress. A bloke in a farmer’s smock is showing Alex something on his phone. Ruth hands him a glass of the elderberry cordial, her eyes gentle.

“The fruits of our labour,” she says. “You don’t want it to end, do you.”

“Never,” Peter admits, and swallows the cordial around the lump in his throat. It’s good.

“I think you could eat the soil, sometimes, just to take it with you,” says Ruth.

Peter grimaces and snorts, but he knows what she means, and he feels better, somehow, knowing that Ruth understands. She’s wearing the dress she’s been working on for the last month, all that thread and cloth that was spread around the kitchen now neatly sewn and bound up around her. Peter clears his throat.

“That dress turned out gorgeous.”

She twirls in it unselfconsciously and looks down at it with a frown. “It’s a fabulous design. That lacework was a nightmare, though. I wouldn’t bother with it next time.” Her mouth twists. “Problem with making dresses yourself is that you can’t see anything except the mistakes you made.”

The fiddler starts up again, and there’s a general rise in volume behind them, a burst of laughter as several people step out onto the makeshift dance floor. 

“Do you want to dance?” Peter says, all in a rush. 

Ruth looks him up and down, the same way she did when he offered to carry her, and narrows her eyes a little. “Yeah, all right,” she says.

“Ooh, Ruth, you’re going to regret agreeing to that,” Alex yells when he sees Peter lead her out. “He’s got two left feet.”

“He won’t tread on me if he knows what’s good for him,” Ruth calls back, and then she’s laughing as Peter tries not to make a hash of the steps and fails miserably, but manages to twirl her a couple of times, her small hands warm in his. She dances with Alex, and then with him again, then Ben the producer, then Emily, then him again. When the music slows, they look at each other, then Ruth shrugs, leans closer against him, and they sway into the old night-club shuffle, turning in slow circles. “I’m knackered, and a bit drunk,” she mumbles into his shirt. Peter heaves a shaky sigh, and rests his chin on Ruth’s head. She smells like soap, and cooking fruit.

“Peter,” she says, and an odd note in her voice makes him pull back and look down at her. “I’m old enough to be your mother, you soft lad,” she says gently. 

“You’re not,” he says, then bites his lip. Ruth laughs quietly. “That wasn’t the right thing to say, was it.”

They resume dancing, and it’s like they’re both inside a bubble of that quiet peace that Peter will miss so much. He holds her carefully, and shifts in time to the music. “It’s weird,” he says, and suddenly he thinks he might be a little drunk, too, because it’s easy to talk about it, as if it was always out in the open. “It’s just the situation, or the time, or something. The whole thing. You remind me of my gran.”

Ruth groans through her laughter and rests her forehead on his chest. “Oh, dear god, I’m not _that_ old.” 

“You know what I mean,” Peter says, laughing a little too, now. “I just come over all Victorian sometimes.”

“The goddess in the home?” Ruth sniggers. “I swear a bit bloody much for that.”

“I’m doing my bit for realism. I just feel it’s historically accurate for the hired hand to pine a bit.” 

“If we’re doing nostalgic faux-Victorianism I’d better cover up the table legs, in case they give you any funny ideas,” Ruth says, and Peter laughs and rolls his eyes. His face is hot, and his heart only aches a little. He’ll go back to the world next week, and it’ll be okay. 

“Oy, you two,” Alex says, appearing next to them, bright-eyed and smelling of homemade gin. He’s got a beer in each hand, and he hands one to Peter. “No cuddling without me.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” says Ruth. “Come here, you.” She hugs Alex around the waist, so hard he mock-wheezes, then he pulls Peter into a hug and gives him a smacking kiss on the cheek.

“God almighty,” mutters Peter, smiling despite himself, and Ruth dissolves into laughter between them. 

“I love you two, I do,” Alex says mournfully. “It’s not the same, out there in the present.”

“God, what a pair,” Ruth says. “You’ll make me get all weepy, the two of you. Come on, that’s enough of that.”

“What if we don’t get renewed?” says Alex, leaning heavily on Peter.

“We’ll go and live on a farm somewhere,” Peter says, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “Ruth’ll look after us.”

“All right,” Ruth says, “But I want a washing machine, and a car. And Peter has to wear his manly period smocks.”

Peter pokes Alex. “She likes me better.”

“Straight to the heart!” Alex staggers, clutching his chest. 

“Don’t be daft, I love you both,” Ruth says, and she cranes up to give Alex a peck on the cheek, and then Peter. “You’re my boys.”

“Ruth’s boys,” Alex says with satisfaction. “You love us, don’t you, Peter?”

“Yes, you twat,” says Peter, and he wrestles Alex into a full-on hug as Alex yelps and laughs, then he hugs Ruth, and the three of them sway together for a while to the fiddle music, making one last piece of shared history before they go back to the future.

**Author's Note:**

> The 'alluring table legs' thing is false, by the way, as these guys know. You can find out more non-facts about Victorian sexuality here - http://www.lesleyahall.net/factoids.htm .


End file.
